I don’t remember the first time I heard the word “transgender.” I do remember being taught that it was wrong, disordered, even perverted. I grew up in an evangelical home. I attended an evangelical megachurch and my family subscribed to quite a few evangelical magazines, including some that focused on politics and culture wars issues. I was homeschooled, which created a sort of bubble that filtered the information I had access to. Click through to read more! Read more

To every person who has ever had to claw their way past abusive or authoritarian parenting only to watch their parent credit that very parenting with their success, I believe in you. You matter. Your thoughts matter. Your opinions matter. Your parents do not define you. You define you. Our parents do not write our stories. We write our stories. Our parents may own their past, but they don’t own our past and they certainly don’t own our future. Click through to read more! Read more

Ryan Stollar of Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO) has been knocking it out of the park lately. I deeply appreciate his advocacy and his willingness to take on big names in his efforts to prevent child abuse. Today I want to take a moment to highlight his two latest pieces, one posted on the HARO website and one posted on HARO’s Homeschoolers Anonymous (HA) project website. Click through to read more! Read more

It’s time for another Lesbian Duplex thread! If you have a link or article or interesting thought that’s not relevant to an ongoing thread, you can share it here. If a conversation on another post has turned entirely off topic, you can bring it here also. Enjoy! Read more

Saturday Link Love is a new feature where I collect and post links to various articles I’ve come upon over the past week. Feel free to share any interesting articles you’ve come along as well! The more the merrier. Click through to read more! Read more

WTF. This book really is turning into a long exercise in torturing Donna. I get that she messed up—and she did. She should not have lied about seeing bruises on Casey. Period. She should be punished for that, absolutely, but she should be punished under the law, not through this slow emotional torture Farris is bringing down on her. What exactly is the moral here? Don’t fabricate evidence or your boyfriend will cheat on you while gaslighting you like heck? Click through to read more! Read more

I agree with some of Gattuso’s critique, but I think there’s a dimension that’s missing. While Levi may benefit financially off of its Pride line, this line also makes pride affirming clothing more available and, likely, more affordable for the average customer. Further, by simply having such a line, Levi contributes to our society’s further acceptance of queer identities, and to the normalization of gay rights. And there’s more, too. Click through to keep reading! Read more

I am not saying our current dating culture is perfect. I am saying that courtship is not the cure-all it is presented as. Indeed, it creates at least as many—and I would argue more—problems as it claims to solve, and some of the things it claims to fix it actually makes worse. I understand that there are parents concerned about protecting their children from harm, and that a lot of young people are worried and uncertain. I get it. But there is no perfect formula for avoiding pain. Click through to read more! Read more

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea that evangelicalism has “borders” that it enforces—beliefs that are considered required for membership. Every religion or belief system has such borders, they just define and defend them differently. What I find fascinating about watching the borders evangelicals draw is how drastically these borders have changed over time, and how very specific they can get. Fred Clark of the Slacktivist uses the term “tribal gatekeepers” to describe this phenomenon. Click through to read more! Read more

If the Family Research Council cared about rights, and about privacy, and about safety, they wouldn’t oppose anti-bullying efforts, they wouldn’t have opposed gay marriage, and they wouldn’t continue to portray LGBTQ people as child predators. If they cared about child sexual abuse, they would be leading an effort to inform their followers of where such abuse usually occurs—in the home—and who typically perpetrates it—a family member or close friend. Click through to read more! Read more